To her great surprise, she had not been at work long before Tito entered. Her first thought was, how cheerless he would feel in the wide darkness of this great room, with one little oil-lamp burning at the further end, and the fire nearly out. She almost ran towards him.
“Tito, dearest, I did not know you would come so soon,” she said, nervously, putting up her white arms to unwind his becchetto .
“I am not welcome then?” he said, with one of his brightest smiles, clasping her, but playfully holding his head back from her.
“Tito!” She uttered the word in a tone of pretty, loving reproach, and then he kissed her fondly, stroked her hair, as his manner was, and seemed not to mind about taking off his mantle yet. Romola quivered with delight. All the emotions of the day had been preparing in her a keener sensitiveness to the return of this habitual manner. “It will come back,” she was saying to herself, “the old happiness will perhaps come back. He is like himself again.”
Tito was taking great pains to be like himself; his heart was palpitating with anxiety.
“If I had expected you so soon,” said Romola, as she at last helped him to take off his wrappings, “I would have had a little festival prepared to this joyful ringing of the bells. I did not mean to be here in the library when you came home.”
“Never mind, sweet,” he said, carelessly. “Do not think about the fire. Come—come and sit down.”
There was a low stool against Tito’s chair, and that was Romola’s habitual seat when they were talking together. She rested her arm on his knee, as she used to do on her father’s, and looked up at him while he spoke. He had never yet noticed the presence of the portrait, and she had not mentioned it—thinking of it all the more.